Friday, 28 September 2007

I feel compelled to repeat that phrase in fear of forgetting it. Humanspossess an innate predisposition for information processing. How aptly Silven M. put it, in his summary of his Psykologiapaper in 1997. I read it as built-in curiosity bug, what powers human tendency for learning and, since predisposed, an element of eagerness and a thirst for learning. Or not. Computers do information processing, as such a mechanical procedure. Nothing is added to the 'personality' of the computer. It does not grow or evolve. It is not the owner of the information processing product. Does that mean that this difference, the ownership, is what really matters? Humans own the information processing product and use it accordingly to make sense of their social and physical world. To categorize the objects and events by building an arsenal of mental representations, the information processing products, that comprise the elements in the changing surrounding world.The author continues, as humans since birth we continuously engage in objects and events information processing, manage to dissolve apparent chaos in our environment, which is referred to as piagetian or psychoanalytic chaos. Piagetian probably related to the environment and psychoanalytic to the internal world, conflicts and so on. Heavy. The innate processes give structure to the infant's world. A structured world view is gradually accomplished by the infant's mind processes. The elements in the structure are the mechanisms dictated by the social and physical laws and are continually applied. The chaos in the world never ceases to exist. It does not disappear. The human mind by the emergence of consciousness and language assimilates its carrier in the chaotic framework. The concepts acquired, in parallel with the development of language provide the features required so gradually fits in its environment and assume its role alongside the objects in the environment and continue to do so in the course of its life. So mind processes and chaos deciphering go along hand in hand.

Thursday, 20 September 2007

Broker of ideas? I caught myself thinking about this notion and made me wonder. What pushed me into formulating such an idea? Thoughts. Agitations in my mind, triggered by words I read. The chase being more exciting than the completion of a task. The snippets of ideas that come across and the turmoil they bring about, once they enter into my mind processes. The fertile background of ideas already in, all the concepts and notions already acquired and stored into my brain.

Sequences of reverberating cell assemblies, the groups of neurons, John H. Holland talked about in his "emergence from chaos to order" book p.96-101. Laid out in a dynamic form, ever ready to respond to a nudge, due to the indefinite nature that memories are stored. The exclusive-or networks of neurons, that keep memories alive for an indefinite time, active, dynamic, till another pulse, triggered by any sort of stimulus, it finds its way into the networks' neighborhood.

The more the neural networks, the reverberated cell assemblies, amassed in the brain of an individual, the more abundant and varied the output would be, an inkling of a furtively passing, wondering thought would produce; giving, depending on the case, a variety of solutions, a rich repertoire of alternatives.

That beats the argument of many, when they attempt to discredit thinking and learning, even as being harmful to your health, or doubt the advantages of formal education. That they are taught so many useless things, an idea closely linked to the education tightly snared in vested economic interests bandwagon.

I do not think so. What you learn, enters your memory storage registers for an indefinite time to become the bed upon which later ideas will breed upon. The narrower the bed the more limited the output, any incoming idea will produce. Very few solutions and as a result stalemate. A stagnant life pattern. The broader the bed the more abundant the output an incoming idea will produce, plenty of solutions and alternatives, a versatile and adaptable personality.